'tell target,' what replaced it?

[uberman]

I know it is still there, however, if macromedia put it in the depreciated actions folder then they must have some new action or way of doing the same thing in mx. Does anyone know what replaced 'tell target?'

Thanks

[enpstudios]

_root ?

[mj97]

tell-target was deprecated in the flash 5.
Look into 'dot-syntax'.
eg. _root.mcinstancename._property

[uberman]

Thanks.

[felix_man]

The basic Idea here is you don't need to use the lengthy tell target actions any more. example:

tellTarget ("mymovie") {
gotoAndPlay(10);
}

can be replaced with...

mymovie.gotoAndPlay(10);

for deeper nesting, i.e. a dynamic text field with the variable textBlock, which is inside a movieclip called myMovie, if you want to change the value to fred can be done like this.

myMovie.textBlock = "fred";

and for calling instances outside of your current clip: if your actionScript is inside a movie clip called MC1 and you want to change a variable (textBlock1) in a movie clip(MC2) that is in the main timeline. you could use this

_root.MC1.textblock1 = "fred";

Now I also suggest using the new text object features to manipulate dynamic text fields but that is a diff. discussin entirely.

let me know if this doesn't make sense and I will send you an example .fla.

[Squareball2]

I thought that in Flash 5 tellTarget was phased out in favor of with()
like

with(myMovie)
{
gotoAndPlay(1);
}

[skipintro]

Originally posted by Squareball2
I thought that in Flash 5 tellTarget was phased out in favor of with()
like

with(myMovie)
{
gotoAndPlay(1);
}

If you want the most literal translation from ActionScript's tellTarget to ECMAScript, "with" is it.

To me, "with" is more of a half-assed function. It provides a minimal amount of time saving with less reusability than a function (or method if in an object). There are no situations where I would use "with" over regular "dot" syntax.

skip
[Edited by skipintro on 03-19-2002 at 11:31 AM]

[Squareball2]

Yeah I never even used with

I always just targeted with the dot syntax. Never understood why you would bother using with instead of tellTarget though. My room mate only knows how to use tellTarget and then he read that he should use with instead.. and I asked "why"... he said "I dunno" hehe
I mean it seems like the same thing to me..
is there a difference other than standards psuedo compliance?

[skipintro]

Originally posted by Squareball2
Yeah I never even used with

I always just targeted with the dot syntax. Never understood why you would bother using with instead of tellTarget though. My room mate only knows how to use tellTarget and then he read that he should use with instead.. and I asked "why"... he said "I dunno" hehe
I mean it seems like the same thing to me..
is there a difference other than standards psuedo compliance?

Standard's compliance IS the reason. While most "deprecated" items will never be REMOVED from ActionScript, you are more likely to confuse someone in the future if you use one. tellTarget is a Flash specific convention which uses the "/" path format. It existed in Flash 4 and therefore needed to be supported fully in Flash 5. Instead of translating tellTargets to "with" automatically they just suggest "with" as the ECMAScript standard alternative.

It's all about what people expect to see.

skip

[Squareball2]

cool thanks for the info I was wondering about that

[dlowe93]

Originally posted by Squareball2
Yeah I never even used with
I mean it seems like the same thing to me..
is there a difference other than standards psuedo compliance?

the main advantage with "with" is that you can use it to do many things to one clip at the same time. for example you could do something like this:

on(release){
with (_root.myClip){
_alpha=100;
_x-=150;
_y-=150;
_xscale=100;
_yscale=100;
gotoAndStop("start");
//add more properties and methods to your heart's delight;
}
}

it just saves you having to write the name of the clip each time. it also comes in handy when writing functions that do multiple things to multiple clips.

hope this helps.

d.

[skipintro]

Originally posted by dlowe93

Originally posted by Squareball2
Yeah I never even used with
I mean it seems like the same thing to me..
is there a difference other than standards psuedo compliance?

the main advantage with "with" is that you can use it to do many things to one clip at the same time. for example you could do something like this:

I agree that the intent is to allow this, however I still contend that whatever you are using it for would be better served as an object or a method of an object. The "with" construct, in my mind, violates OO methodology.

For your example instead of having that code in that on ( release ) you could do this:

<PRE>
function __naturalize()
{
this._alpha=100;
this._x-=150;
this._y-=150;
this._xscale=100;
this._yscale=100;
this.gotoAndStop("start");
//add more properties and methods to your heart's delight
}
</PRE>

Then, if you wanted all movie clips to have this property you could:

MovieClip.prototype.naturalize = __naturalize;

Then usage would be:
<PRE>
on ( release )
{
_root.myClip.naturalize();
}
</PRE>

The same method could be added to buttons, textfields, or by adding it to the Object.prototype you could give all objects that method (though for this example that's not the best case)

skip


[Edited by skipintro on 03-19-2002 at 01:56 PM]